Unraveling interspecific relationships among highland lizards: first phylogenetic hypothesis using total evidence in Liolaemus montanus group (Iguania: Liolaemidae)

ABDALA C. S; QUINTEROS S.; SEMHAN R. V.; BULACIOS ARROYO A; JAMES A. SCHULTE; PAZ M. M.; RUIZ MONACHESI, MARIO RICARDO; LASPIUR A.; AGUILAR KIRIGUIN A.; GUTIERREZ R.; VALLADARES P.; VALDES J.; PORTELLI S. ; SANTA CRUZ R.; APARICIO J.; GARCÍA N, E.; LANGSTROTH R.

ZOOLOGICAL JOURNAL OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2020 vol. 189 p. 349 - 377

0024-4082

The South American lizard genus Liolaemus comprises more than 260 species, of which more than 60 are recognized as members of the Liolaemus montanus group distributed in the Andes from central Peru to central Argentina and intervening regions of Bolivia and Chile. Despite its great morphological diversity and complex taxonomic history, a robust phylogenetic estimate is still lacking for this group. Here, we study the morphological and molecular diversity of the L. montanus group and present the most complete quantitative phylogenetic hypothesis for the group to date. Our phylogeny includes 103 terminal taxa, of which 91 are members of the L. montanus group (58 are assigned to available species and 33 are of uncertain taxonomic status). Our matrix includes 306 morphological and ecological characters and 3057 molecular characters. The morphological characters include 48 continuous and 258 discrete characters, of which 70% (216) are novel to the literature. The molecular characters represent five mitochondrial markers. We performed three analyses: a morphology-only matrix; a molecular-only matrix and a matrix including both the morphological and molecular characters (Total Evidence Hypothesis). Our Total Evidence Hypothesis recovers the L. montanus group as monophyletic and includes at least twelve major clades, revealing an unexpectedly complex phylogeny